Tuesday, July 8, 2014

A life in balance is similar to our challenging Addiction/Recovery eBulletin. We always include accurate, evidence based articles with a firm foundation in verified scientific research. These are the stories that people usually ignore if the evidence conflicts with their preconceived ideas. Then we have the all-important fear mongering stories such as "Reading and Thinking Addictions: Can they cost you your ignorance?" We toss these in much as a "movies about movies" film festival might double bill Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo" with Lamberto Bava's "Demons" because it is what's on the screen that counts.
In the first category this week, we offer scientific evidence that gambling addiction has psychiatric origins. Of course, we know it is really because of demons (not the movie). SIDE BAR FACT: More people believe in demons than believe in germs despite plenty of evidence of germs, and very few verifiable snapshots of demons. Oh, we also have plenty of celebrity stories because it is fun to mock them as if they were not real people, but sacrificial cartoon characters who carry the weight of our negative expectations as if they were SMITH or Side Two of Abbey Road. Before Dennis Miller takes time out of his busy schedule pandering to his Koch addiction, I'll stop sub-referencing and get on to news you can use, and opinions that won't drive you to drink

(Burl Barer is on the Advisory Board of Writers in Treatment and is irresponsible for his own commentary)

"I'm
walking down the road, and suddenly, out of the blue, there's an
awareness of her ... and I buckle," he says. "I have to duck off into a
lane or something and blub for a while, and then get on with it. And
that's it. So, I'd imagine it will be there for a long time. I mean,
what else?"

An
international collaboration of scientists leading the world's largest
longitudinal adolescent brain imaging study to date has learned that it
is possible to predict teenage binge-drinking. The research, published
in Nature, found that aspects of life experience, personality and brain
structure are strong determinants of future alcohol misuse.

The regional school board
is getting back to nature with a new program to prevent drug and alcohol
abuse among at-risk youth in the region. It means things like taking a
walk in the woods or a canoe trip with family as kids aged eight to 18
build better relationships with their families and more respect for
themselves.

Amber said: 'My boyfriend
actually had maggots coming out of his leg. I know people don't want to
hear stuff like that, but it is really happening out here.' These
sisters are proof that the flesh-eating drug Krokodil is sweeping
America and taking a terrible toll on addicts around the country, Amber
and Angie Neitzel, from Joliet, Illinois, say they have been abusing the
toxic cocktail - which originated in Russia - for around a year and a
half, which means it has been on the streets of the U.S. for much longer
than originally feared.

Kenny Stearns III first
took Suboxone to help him kick OxyContin after an overdose. But it
wasn't long before he began dissolving Suboxone strips in water and
shooting the mixture into his veins. "The first few times I used it, I
could get really high from it. Then I just felt normal ... I wasn't
high, but I wasn't sick either," said the 25-year-old from New Castle,
Ind. "To me, it's just trading one addiction for another."

Move over, kale. There's a
new green making a name for itself on the farmers' market circuit. "What
we're doing is giving patients in L.A. access to better, more
affordable medicine," says Paizley Bradbury, executive director of the
West Coast Collective. "With dispensaries, the medicine can get pretty
pricey. By removing the middle man, patients will be getting medicine
direct from vendors for a wholesale price."

Two California counties and
the city of Chicago, hard hit by OxyContin addiction, are suing the
drug's manufacturers. Reporter Emily Green says they're charging that
the drug-makers have contributed to an epidemic of prescription drug
abuse.

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff Catastrophe: Oy Vey My Child is Gay (and an Addict) by Anne Lapedus BrestDystopia by James Siddall I Want My Life Back by Steve Hamilton Lit by Mary Karr Memoirs of an Addicted BrainPermanent Midnight by Jerry StahlScar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis Smacked by Melinda FergusonThe Night of the Gun by David Carr

Celebrities such as Matthew
Perry and Owen Wilson have employed sober coaches in the
past,reportedly at the request of Hollywood studios they are working
with. Athletes such as Theo Fleury and Josh Hamilton have also received
assistance in the past to maintain their sobriety while returning to
work.

If you have any comments, compliments or suggestions for our weekly Addiction/Recovery eBulletin, please contact us at:Writers In Treatment

Let Them Eat Coke VIDEO

Cheers for Kate VIDEO

Kate was at the Blessed
Sacrament School in Islington, North London, to see the work of a
project she launched to help families affected by addiction - a cause
royal aides said is very important to her. Funded by The Royal
Foundation and Comic Relief, and delivered by charities Place2Be and
Action on Addiction (the Duchess is a patron), aims to provide support
for schoolchildren affected by a parent's drug or alcohol misuse.

More than 10,000 American
toddlers 2 or 3 years old are being medicated for attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder outside established pediatric guidelines. Perhaps
the fact that 10,000 American toddlers are being treated for A.D.H.D.
is not surprising, considering that according to the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, a whopping 5.9 million children 17 or under
receive a diagnosis at some point in their lives. Journalist Thom
Hartmann dispels the myths about A.D.H.D. and explains why it might be
an evolutionary trait and not a disorder.

When their son had to take a
medical leave from college, Jack and Wendy knew they - and he - needed
help with his binge drinking. Their son's psychiatrist, along with a few
friends, suggested Alcoholics Anonymous.

12 states had a pain pill rate of AT LEAST 100 for every 100 people AUDIO

California Doctors Prescribing Fewer Painkillers AUDIO

California doctors
prescribe fewer opioid painkillers than any state except Hawaii,
according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The CDC says that in 2012, doctors in California wrote 57
prescriptions for drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin for every 100 people.
Twelve states had a prescription rate of at least 100 for every 100
people.

"Marijuana is certainly a
potential worrisome risk factor for hurting sperm quality," he said.
"I'd tell my patients to stop smoking marijuana. I wouldn't say to my
patient to go out and do whatever you want because it won't make a
difference. To me, that would be overstating those results."

What Ford says now
indicates that he's trying to explain his troubles in a way that will do
him the least possible political damage. First, he wants everyone to
know he's not to blame for all those things that happened, those many
occasions when he made an international fool of himself - even though
he's kind of sorry about them. The point is, he has a disease.

Daniel, until recently, was
a researcher, using his bedroom as a laboratory. His apparatus was his
own brain. He bought chemical compounds labelled "not for human use" on
the internet, ingested them and waited to see whether he was headed for
heaven or hell. He wondered if he was going to die.

PEOPLE
with a serious addiction to technology are to be given the chance to
apply for a Castaway-style retreat on a remote Scottish island where
they will be banned from communicating with the outside world through
technological devices. Six technology addicts will be selected for the
three-day experiment, without any access to smartphones, tablets or any
form of wi-fi connection.

It's been revealed that
Portia De Rossi secretly checked into a rehab centre specialising in
substance abuse for a month stay in May. The Australian actress and wife
of Ellen DeGeneres spent 30 days at the Passages Malibu rehab facility,
claims InTouch magazine.

From February 2005 to June
2010, Donald Black and his co-contributors at the University of Iowa
conducted interviews to determine gambling levels in 95 compulsive
gamblers and 91 control subjects, as well as in 537 first-degree
relatives of compulsive gamblers and 538 first-degree relatives of
controls. "Maybe this situation provides a better chance of finding
genes that are linked to the gambling disorder."

Have you ever found it odd
that a side effect of Cymbalta, a leading anti-depressant, is suicide?
It seems counterintuitive, but in a country where medicine is dictated
by Big Pharma, such a paradox is hardly surprising. That's because, as
former CNN correspondent Amber Lyon points out, Western medicine
treatments are not intended to get to the root of the sickness.

Ozzy Osbourne went to an
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting during a tour stop in Stockholm, but
struggled to join in as the session was conducted in Swedish. When we
were in Stockholm on tour, I went to one. I couldn't understand a word
they were saying." However, the rocker insists the session was not a
waste of time, adding, "It still helped. It's just the act of going
there."

"The results from Florida
show that state action can make a difference, and confirms the tight
correlation between prescribing and deaths," Dr. Tom Frieden, director
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in an email to
Michael Botticelli, acting head of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy.

REEL RECOVERY FILM FESTIVAL
is a social, educational, networking and recovery forum showcasing
first-time filmmakers and experienced professionals who make films about
addiction and recovery. Our audience is treatment professionals, people
in recovery, members of the entertainment industry, media
representatives, educated moviegoers and the general public.

Children spend nearly a
year slumped in front of the TV or staring at computer screens by the
time they are seven, a former children's minister has warned. Tim
Loughton said this screen addiction in youngsters could cause changes in
the brain similar to those seen in cocaine addicts and alcoholics.

Q: Part of the problem you explore in "Fed Up" is that processed foods are being engineered by scientists to make us want more.
A:
Food is being purposefully formulated to addict you. Then it is
purposefully marketed (and) targeted to young children to addict them at
an early age. This is unethical, right? This is immoral, particularly
when you see the results of it -- which is this worldwide epidemic of
diabetes and obesity.

Internet addiction has
increasingly become a major problem among young people, and nowhere is
this more true than in China, which is trying to tackle the problem by
putting youngsters through their paces at boot camps.

"Legal drugs are the main
problem that we have in our country as it relates to morbidity and
mortality. By far. Many more people die of tobacco than all of the drugs
together. Many more people die of alcohol than all of the illicit drugs
together."

We Americans like to think
of ourselves as exceptional, the land of the free and the home of the
brave, the City on the Hill and all that. When it comes to the politics
and culture of drugs, we are indeed special-or at least dramatically
different from the rest of the Western world. Too often, however, we are
special for the wrong reasons.

Ever since childhood, when
he saw his father descend into alcoholism, evolutionary physiologist
Robert Dudley has been curious about humans' strong attraction to booze.
The notion crystallized one day 18 years ago in the monkey-filled
jungles of Panama, when he observed an abundance of rotting fruit
littering the forest floor, fragrant with the smell of alcohol. Dudley,
who specializes in the biomechanics of flight, spent the ensuing years
accumulating evidence for this hypothesis, which he presents in a new
book, "The Drunken Monkey, Why we drink and abuse alcohol."

"Sweet are the uses of
adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious
jewel in his head." Science is now helping to explain the Bard's
positive spin on adversity by researching what the New York Times
recently called posttraumatic stress disorder's "surprisingly positive
flip side": posttraumatic growth, or PTG.